We report measurements of the CMB polarization power spectra from the 2003 January Antarctic flight of BOOMERANG. The primary results come from 6 days of observation of a patch covering 0.22% of the sky centered near R:A: ¼ 82N5, decl: ¼ À45 . The observations were made using four pairs of polarization-sensitive bolometers operating in bands centered at 145 GHz. Using two independent analysis pipelines, we measure a nonzero hEEi signal in the range 201 < l < 1000 with a significance of 4.8 , a 2 upper limit of 8.6 K 2 for any hBBi contribution, and a 2 upper limit of 7.0 K 2 for the hEBi spectrum. Estimates of foreground intensity fluctuations and the nondetection of hBBi and hEBi signals rule out any significant contribution from Galactic foregrounds. The results are consistent with a ÃCDM cosmology seeded by adiabatic perturbations. We note that this is the first detection of CMB polarization with bolometric detectors.

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a sub-orbital surveying experiment designed to study the evolutionary history and processes of star formation in local galaxies (including the Milky Way) and galaxies at cosmological distances. The BLAST continuum camera, which consists of 270 detectors distributed between 3 arrays, observes simultaneously in broadband (30%) spectral-windows at 250, 350, and 500 µm. The optical design is based on a 2 m diameter telescope, providing a diffraction-limited resolution of 30 ′′ at 250 µm. The gondola pointing system enables raster mapping of arbitrary geometry, with a repeatable positional accuracy of ∼ 30 ′′ ; post-flight pointing reconstruction to 5 ′′ rms is achieved. The on-board telescope control software permits autonomous execution of a pre-selected set of maps, with the option of manual override. In this paper we describe the primary characteristics and measured in-flight performance of BLAST. BLAST performed a test-flight in 2003 and has since made two scientifically productive long-duration balloon flights: a 100-hour flight from ESRANGE (Kiruna), Sweden to Victoria Island, northern Canada in June 2005; and a 250-hour, circumpolar-flight from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in December 2006.

We detect correlations in the cosmic far-infrared background due to the clustering of star-forming galaxies in observations made with the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, BLAST, at 250, 350, and 500 µm. We perform jackknife and other tests to confirm the reality of the signal. The measured correlations are well fit by a power law over scales of 5-25 arcminutes, with ∆I/I = 15.1 ± 1.7%. We adopt a specific model for submillimeter sources in which the contribution to clustering comes from sources in the redshift ranges 1.3 ≤ z ≤ 2.2, 1.5 ≤ z ≤ 2.7, and 1.7 ≤ z ≤ 3.2, at 250, 350 and 500 µm, respectively. With these distributions, our measurement of the power spectrum, P (k θ ), corresponds to linear bias parameters, b = 3.8 ± 0.6, 3.9 ± 0.6 and 4.4 ± 0.7, respectively. We further interpret the results in terms of the halo model, and find that at the smaller scales, the simplest halo model fails to fit our results. One way to improve the fit is to increase the radius at which dark matter halos are artificially truncated in the model, which is equivalent to having some star-forming galaxies at z ≥ 1 located in the outskirts of groups and clusters. In the context of this model we find a minimum halo mass required to host a galaxy is log(M min /M ⊙ ) = 11.5 +0.4 −0.1 , and we derive effective biases b eff = 2.2 ± 0.2, 2.4 ± 0.2, and 2.6 ± 0.2, and effective masses log(M eff /M ⊙ ) = 12.9 ± 0.3, 12.8 ± 0.2, and 12.7 ± 0.2 , at 250, 350 and 500 µm, corresponding to spatial correlation lengths of r 0 = 4.9, 5.0, and 5.2 ± 0.7 h −1 Mpc, respectively. Finally, we discuss implications for clustering measurement strategies with Herschel and Planck.

We present a measurement of the temperature-polarization angular cross power spectrum, T E , of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The result is based on ∼ 200 hours of data from 8 polarization sensitive bolometers operating at 145 GHz during the 2003 flight of Boomerang. We detect a significant T E correlation in the ℓ-range between 50 and 950 with a statistical significance > 3.5 σ. Contamination by polarized foreground emission and systematic effects are negligible in comparison with statistical uncertainty. The spectrum is consistent with previous detections and with the "concordance model" that assumes adiabatic initial conditions. This is the first measurement of T E using bolometric detectors.

Aims. We discuss instrumental and analytic methods that have been developed for the first generation of bolometric cosmic microwave background (cmb) polarimeters. The design, characterization, and analysis of data obtained using Polarization Sensitive Bolometers (PSBs) are described in detail. This is followed by a brief study of the effect of various polarization modulation techniques on the recovery of sky polarization from scanning polarimeter data. Methods. Having been successfully implemented on the sub-orbital Boomerang experiment, PSBs are currently operational in two terrestrial cmb polarization experiments (Quad and the Robinson Telescope). We investigate two approaches to the analysis of data from these experiments, using realistic simulations of time ordered data to illustrate the impact of instrumental effects on the fidelity of the recovered polarization signal. Results. We find that the analysis of difference time streams takes full advantage of the high degree of common mode rejection afforded by the PSB design. In addition to the observational efforts currently underway, this discussion is directly applicable to the PSBs that constitute the polarized capability of the Planck HFI instrument.